Oscar Wilde 1: The Happy Prince and Other Stories

Secret Life of Books

Few writers have blurred the boundaries between life and art quite so spectacularly as Oscar Wilde. In his writing, he challenged the moral standards of the time, advocated for Irish Nationalism and demanded tolerance of homosexuality. He wrote about decadence and the corruption of youth before going out in a fireball of scandal of his own making, his reputation shattered in the infamous trial that followed.

So, was Oscar Wilde the great genius of his day or just a rather talented man with a knack for publicity? Was he a martyr in the history of gay activism, or just a self-absorbed pain in the arse? These are just some of the questions Sophie and Jonty are asking in the first of a four part series on Oscar Wilde.

In this first episode, they look at his early years and how cultural and political movements of the time shaped his first great work - the seemingly timeless fairy-tales of The Happy Prince and Other Stories. Into these stories, Wilde condensed years of scholarship, literary criticism and the development of a personal aesthetic and philosophy. It is a short book and deceptively simple because these stories - like all the best fairytales - conceal deeper truths about human experience. Most importantly, through them Wilde found his voice as a writer, unleashing the extraordinary creative outpouring of the following ten years.

Texts referred to:

Oscar: A Life (2018) by Matthew Sturgis

Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll

Children’s and Household Tales (1812) by the Brothers Grimm

Doctor Faustus (c.1594) Christopher Marlowe

Patience (1881) by Gilbert and Sullivan (extract from 1961 recording with John Reed)

Study of the Greek Poets (1873) by JA Symonds

Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) by Walter Pater

Social Life in Greece (1874) by John Pentland Mahaffy

David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens

Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

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